Lionel Milwaukee Road 4 Pack Photos & Quality Issues

Beautiful cars but very frustrating..... 

I guess Lionel -- or its Asian factories -- must think they're still selling to "collectors" who keep this stuff in boxes or just display them on shelves.  You'd think by now they would have gotten the message that there are LOTS of "operators" out there in the market, where these kind of quality issues get noticed -- and communicated -- FAST.

 

David

I know you will get your repair issues resolved. Enjoy these cars, they look beautiful. Thanks for the pictures.

These are beautiful cars.  Enjoy the set and thanks for posting the photos.

Good luck with your set.  Hope you get the issues corrected so you can enjoy them fully.

Charlie I assume we will be testing yours Saturday night. I will bring a nice NYC diesel to pull them...

Jim

Sorry to hear your having issues, hopefully Lionel will get them turned around and back to you fast.

Hi,

 

On my 2 car set, the lights on the dome car flickered badly, and eventually went off completely. I discovered this to be due to an imperfect connection between the connecting wire and the chassis. This wire and screw may be found under one of the trucks. I removed the screw, cleaned up the surfaces of both the chassis and the tag, and then re-fitted the screw. Once a good connection was established the lighting problems went away.

 

This may not apply to your set, but it might be worth a try, just in case.

I was really disappointed on seeing the two coaches, as these cars originally where going to represent coaches the Friends of the 261 has in their fleet, instead they are the incorrect for this train, they have done 1948 Milwaukee Road Coaches instead.  This will be great for the yellow cars coming out for the E8's, Ho Hum, of course the diner in the two pack is incorrect also for the Friends of the 261 fleet, I was looking forward to the ex arm hospital car that was turned into a private first class car...

 

I'll have to see how big of material my friends laser will hold.

  

I did not expect Lionel to model the cars true to prototype, hence a GGD set would be in order?

I like the new set, however what gets me is there will not be enough made for everyone to own.

Therefore I will stick with my K line Milwaukee 21 and 18 inch passenger cars with black roofs... they look pretty darn good!

 

Jim & Charlie - Plenty of NYC steam at my house to pull those beautiful cars

I can understand issues with the lights to a degree, although still not acceptable, but the truck falling off? Obviously, it was never put on in the first place

 

Those are nice looking cars nontheless.

 

 I'm sure Lionel will take care of it.

Nicole

I thought about trying to fix the cars, but since 3 of them had problems I decided to send them back to Lionel rather than trying to mess with them.  Thanks for sharing the information about the connection. 

 

I called Lionel this morning and got a RMA and shipped them out this afternoon. 

 

To add to my frustration for at least a few minutes, I got word today that the dealer who was suppose to send 2 car set to me for the past week and half does not have anymore; eventhough, I called to ask if he did before ordering them.  I was suspicious of this when I had called him several times last asking about the status of my order.  The dealer has good reputation, but I guess stuff happens.  I immediately got on the phone and called another dealer and he did have the 2 car set...so it worked out ok. 

 

This is my 5th time sending something back to Lionel this year.  Luckily, my work only charges me their cost for shipping.  Thanks everyone for your comments on the cars.  They will look good with my S-3 after they work correctly!! 

 

Ken

Have had the same thing happen with dealers not sending items, and one sending something months after getting it elsewhere (money problems on their end?) returned the item and no refund yet.

 

5 things back to Lionel? Out of 100 or 10? That is a lot of returns!!!!

I got my 4 pack Milwaukee Road pass. cars back from Lionel on Friday.  It took about 2 weeks.  The Tech wrote that he replaced 2 broken trucks, repaired 3 broken wires, and replaced a missing C-Clip.  They work well except I have had some trouble with the back light on sky top car when I ran it.  It kept going off, but I was able to adjust it and appears to be ok now.  Here is video I took of them along with the 2 pack and with my 261 S-3.

 

That a boy,Make them fix the broken items.At least it keeps a few American people working. Glad to see them workin now.

 

Sorry about the quality issues, and the deviation from the "Friends of" consist, but they sure do make one beautiful train.

What is the correct/prototypical engine to place in front of these cars.  Are there engines available?

 

Thank you

I have a book on the MR Hiawatha passenger trains, and according to it, these cars rarely ran behind the S3s. Mostly they ran pulled by diesels, not steam. And, the steam S3s used on rare occasions were NOT the #261 or #265 steamers, they were other #s.

If you like I can post copies of the pages that show that to be true.

man that sounds awesome. love the cars

 

Robert, think you are right.  I think that only the MR passenger cars with the "Beaver Tail" observation car were pulled by the steam MR engines.

 

The MR Atlantic and the MR Hudson engines to be specific.

Someone posted the procedure he used to correct the problem of cars not lighting.

Does anyone have a link to the thread?

 

 

I'm not going to say it, I'm not going to say it, I'm not going to say it..........

those darn windows drive me crazzzzzzzzzzzzzzy. This how they should look.....Don

Actually the way the Lionel cars are produced are correct, how do I know, The Museum I belong to has 1948 windows from scrapped cars.  the window frames where allum that where bolted on from the outside.  when I don't have to trench thru two feet of snow I will take pictures of them,

 

btw we did not cut the cars, the Milwaukee road did, we got them from the estate of a former employee that saved them from the dumpster

This is a custom painted Brass model, latter on the shops just masked around the gaskets and not the frames.  Again I will take pictures when some snow melts and I can get into the boxcar the windows are stored in

I'm using my iPad now instead of my desktop, and the browser doesn't display the full URL for me to copy/past the link here for you.  But double-check the Milwaukee Road passenger car thread w/video that you created on Nov 15, 2013.  On page 2, there are a couple of posts with pictures showing how a local service tech fixed the problem with lights not working correctly.  Grounding wires were the issue. 

 

Hope that helps.

 

David

Very nice looking cars & video.

Regarding the lighting issue. I had one coach where the lights were rather unpredictable, and I traced this down to an uncertain electrical connection where the ground wire was screwed to the underside of the floor. Removing the screw, cleaning the floor surface with a brass wire pencil, and then reconnecting the ground wire and screw solved the problem permanently.

 

As for the windows.... Well, I think that they look absolutely fine. When my 6-car rake is flying along the track, powered by a beautiful brace of Legacy F7 A units, it is a wonderful sight to behold. A glorious world of colour, light, smoke and sound. 

Its all "in the eye of the beholder".

 

RickO is that a picture of Ed Boyle? :-)

I'll say it " why aren't the windows like the real passenger cars??" 

I thought that they were? 

Nicole,

 

not really, look closely and make a comparison.   With a price tag of $1k, you would think the cars would be prototypical.

Rocky Mountaineer is correct about the streamlined cars running behind the S3 Northern. The Lionel set we are talking about in this thread is intended to represent the current excursion train running behind the 261. The correct period cars to run with an S3 would be heavyweights - Lionel, MTH, K-Line and GGD have all made appropriate sets. You would not see an S3 pulling streamlined cars very often "back in the day," although it happened occasionally. 

 

If you don't have a 261 to pull the current Lionel streamliners, they would be correct behind maroon and orange F units or the Atlas or MTH Milwaukee Road Fairbanks Morse Erie Builts.

HI Scrapiron, 

I did have Eastside trains look at my cars  a few months ago, and the fix that Nicole used was what they did. So, hopefully, others will try that approach. All the best, Dave

Don, nice looking car there.  And...it's Southern Pacific!  I thought you were modeling the railroad mentioned in this thread.  Matt

Sorry it took so long for the snow to melt up here, but here are some pictures of the 1948 Milwaukee Road Passenger cars that Lionel has just done.  The First window pictured is the small window from the end door, the next two pictures are windows from the side, maybe from a coach.  originally these flanges where unpainted and bolted (screwed) on from the outside of the car, latter on when the cars where repainted to UP colors they just masked off the rubber gaskets and painted the windows in place on the car.